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432 of 450 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Juliano over-exposed; Recipes under-explained., February 11, 2003
I'm new to raw foods "cooking", so I'll start with the first salad in Juliano's "Raw". Let's see, the ingredients include: anise hyssop, borage, bronze fennel, chickweed, meadow rue... What the heck is meadow rue? Let's check the glossary, "a delicious leaf"...Thanks Juliano. I'll also need mizuna, salad burnet, society garlic and summer purslane. I've heard of some of these items, but I've never seen them in Seattle natural markets, and Seattle's a very vegetarian cuisine savvy city. Unless you can grow these things yourself, good luck finding them. I must admit that despite the fact that I prepare food from scratch quite a bit, I found Juliano's recipes too complicated and under-explained to attempt a single one. Other raw foods "cookbooks" explain raw foods prep in considerably more detail, such as "Warming Up to Living Foods" by Elysa Markowitz, and "Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Cookbook" by Steve Meyerowitz.Juliano writes that the purpose of the book is to introduce or reacquaint the reader to raw foods, and to provide the tools to eat this way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Julanio succeeds in these goals, although he certainly gave himself a nice modeling portfolio. Since most readers will be unfamiliar with raw foods, he needs to provide more guidance than most cookbooks in what are the ingredients, how to shop for them, the kitchen equipment needed, and how to prepare the foods. The guidance is too sparse and at times inadequate in these areas. A few of the many examples of inadequate instruction:
* Many recipes require a dehydrator, yet there's zero guidance on how to select one.
*Several recipes call for "coconut meat", such as the carrot cake which calls for 2 cups. Approximately how many coconuts will I need to buy or find on the beach to yield 2 cups? Will one do, or do I need to buy a second one? Juliano doesn't say.
* Rejuvelac is common fermented beverage among raw fooders. However, as the Sproutman points out in his raw foods book, "there can be good fermentation or bad fermentation." There should be guidance on how to tell if the liquid has fermented, and when exactly should you discard it and start over.
* Sprouting seeds is an important prerequisite to many of Juliano's recipes, yet he briefly outlines only one method of sprouting, and one of the less common/less effective methods. It would be nice if he discussed and provided photographs of several options. Afterall, there was room in the book to provide several full-page pictures of Juliano. (The book contains about 8 pictures, several of them full-page of Juliano doing something other than food preparation.) Which brings us to book's design. Some call it beautiful, and it's true it's full of beautiful colorful food photography. However, overall, I find it busy, wasteful and extravagant. The designers seemed to go wild displaying every design element they could. Every page is glossy and has multi-colored striped horizontal rules of varying thicknesses running through it, often bisecting an otherwise gorgeous plate of food. Some pages have writing at a 90 degree angle running up the page. I could go on with examples, but my point is, what could be a very visually appealing coffee table book is loud and annoying with a multitude of inconsistent design elements. Despite the busy design elements, it certainly was inspiring to look at glossy photos of delicious-looking raw foods. (And if you like that Romance novel cover look, you might find it inspiring to look at glossy photos of Juliano. :-) However, I'm sticking to less expensive raw foods books that do a better job of explaining how to prepare this healthy, but often complicated cuisine.
~Reviewed by Groovy Vegan for Amazon.com
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123 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An inspirational book filled with delicious recipes!, December 29, 1999
I had the enviable opportunity of dining at Juliano's restaurant in San Francisco this past summer. Being new to raw foods, I was not sure what to expect. The food was absolutely delicious, out-of-this-world, and beautifully presented. The textures and flavors were amazing. The experience inspired me to learn more about raw foods and to put _Raw: The Uncook Book_ at the top of my Christmas list. Luckily, I did get this as a present, and I made one of the recipes this evening. It turned out great! My sense of the recipes is that many are somewhat complicated in that they cross-reference other recipes, but that you can take short-cuts to "ease into" this cuisine if you don't have time to do everything. Ultimately I believe Juliano's claim in the introduction that with a little practice, raw food preparation takes less time than cooked food prep. Finally, the majority of ingredients are not that exotic and easily obtainable in most regions. The book is filled with humor and beautiful color photographs. I highly recommend it!
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153 of 162 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I recommend it, February 1, 2001
Overall, this is a great book. It's inspiring and fun, and the food doesn't get much healthier. I've really gotten into the book during the last couple of weeks, and most of the recipes I've tried are very good. You don't need all of the ingredients he lists, so don't be afraid to omit or substitute. I do not yet have a dehyrator, and my oven doesn't go below 170 degrees, but I have been able to test some of the bread-type recipes. They're very good. Actually, everything has been very good so far (especially the milkshake!), except the Butternut Squash Soup. I found I just don't like raw butternut squash.If you are on a low calorie or lowfat diet, be aware of these things: 1-There is no calorie information. Once I calculated the calories for the Cashew Gelato, I found out why! It was enough for a whole day's calories for anybody. But it really looks like ice cream. 2-Many recipes use nuts, dates, orange juice, olive oil, avocados, and maple syrup. I think that keeping the avocados in any diet is a good idea, though. Flax seeds show up a lot, too, but they are highly beneficial and don't seem to always get digested, if you know what I mean! 3-Juliano's "butter" is olive oil with salt. He says, "Slap an extra slab of 'butter' on everything! You can eat all you want and get what olive oil promotes most: healthier hair and skin and better circulation." Easy for him to say. He's already skinny. About the orange juice-it shows up everywhere. He combines it with things I never would have thought of. However, he usually lists low calorie substitutes. And he never claimed this was a diet book! I found sprouting to be surprisingly easy, but his chart for sprouting and soaking times is incomplete. Sometimes he refers you to the chart, but what you need is missing. More information on sprouting would be helpful. Juliano is clearly in love with this way of cooking and this way of life. His enthusiasm is contagious. He seems to jump off the pages. Along this line, his sense of humor shows through when he names his recipes odd names which can be very misleading. Two examples are "Cottage Cheese" and "Nacho Cheese", which have no ingredients remotely contained in real cheese (except oil). I'm not saying these recipes aren't good substitutes or good on their own merit, just that the names are misleading. If you are new to vegetarianism or raw foods, I would not suggest switching over to this way of eating quickly. It will shock your system, and you'll probably get discouraged. Break yourself in over the course of a few months, and your body will thank you. This is the nicest book I've seen on the subject.
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